So they say if you have 2 more people in your family then it’s dysfunctional.
I guess I’ve spent most of my life trying to either understand my family, change it, dream it up to be something different, gotten angry at them, gotten frustrated with them, been embarrassed by them or dissappointed….
Well, this Thanksgiving I think the dysfunction brought me more laughter and joy than anything I’ve experienced in a long time.
Dustin and I arrived in Charlottesville, VA to begin our Thanksgiving at my aunts house where 15 of gathered. And without going into my characterizations and descriptions of them….it is quite of mix of people with different experiences in life, cultures, successes, failures yet all from the same blood line.
Within 10 minutes of us being greeted, the jokes began, the small talk surfaced and the same anxiety that I always tend to feel rose up and forgetting that I must hurry up and put on my extra layer of thick skin. Well, after about 30 minutes…something just settled in me….looking around the room at each of them and what would have been feelings of judgement or defensiveness I found appreciation and life rise up in me. Just listening to the laughter, the jokes, and seeing how different we all were became a beautiful thing to me…something that I viewed as messy and chaotic when I was younger but now was of great beauty.
I was reminded of a picture from the book “The Shack”….when Jesus takes Mac into the garden. To Mac, it looked like a mess and it was horrible but to Jesus, it was tremendous and breathtakingly beautiful. Jesus said it was a “fractal”. A “fractal” is something that looks like a mess and looks like utter chaos but when looked at under a microscope it is ordered and perfect with patterns of color.
That “fractal” is my family.
It’s not anything that they have done….it’s how I choose to look at things. Isn’t that always the case?
It was an amazing thanksgiving….as we played played flag football, watched movies, slept, hung out in the city, laughed, watched old videos of all of us from years ago, and ate till we cried….my soul sat back and rested in the appreciation of where I come from.
The dysfunctional family of mine is normal, is perfect, is fun, is challenging, is inspiring, and is me.
Picture of a fractal
2 Comments
November 30, 2008 at 12:14 am
Well said! I totally agree. As we grow wiser in our souls, it is how we view and looking at things. I love the saying, “If you can’t change something, change the way You look at it.” It is so true! Thank you for sharing your beautiful thoughts.
November 30, 2008 at 12:27 am
Congratulations. You’ve learned one of the great truths of life.
A friend once told me how to handle my family and keep from taking them personally: pretend I was a cultural anthropologist studying them.
Whatever works, huh?